Social gaming play, Playfish raises $17 mil series B
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Social gaming play, Playfish, announced today that it has completed a new round of funding led by Accel Partners and Index Ventures. The $17 million Series B investment will be used to grow Playfish. The company is betting on social games, which according to Playfish, has an important role in the future of the gaming and entertainment.
Four out of five of the current games from Playfish are on Facebook’s top 10 most active game users list: Who Has The Biggest Brain?, Bowling Buddies , Word Challenge and Pet Society
So, how does Playfish make money? The company has teamed with Google to display in-game advertising. There are over 10 million active monthly users for Playfish games spending over 2 billion monthly minutes of play time. The company has offices in San Francisco, Beijing and Norway.
“Social gaming is a significant evolution in gaming and is in some ways a return to the roots of games,” says Segerstrale. “Our games are designed around social emotions – people play our games with the same people that they would play cards, play board games or go bowling with in the real world. Sharing the game experience with friends makes it more compelling and fun and results in more play time, viral distribution and better monetization potential over time.”
Select Playfish games are also now available on MySpace’s application platform.
Playfish also announced that Kevin Comolli, from Accel Partners and Ben Holmes from Index Ventures, will both join its board of directors.
